Also 9 waggonet. [f. WAGON sb. + -ETTE.] A four-wheeled carriage, made open or with a removable cover and furnished with a seat or bench at each side facing inwards and with one or two seats arranged crosswise in front.
1858. Simmonds, Dict. Trade, Waggonette, a carriage to carry six or eight persons.
1862. Mrs. H. Freshfield, Tour Grisons, iv. 58. At half-past five the wagonnettes (to give a fashionable name to our primitive vehicles) were in readiness.
1864. J. Gilbert & G. C. Churchill, Excurs. Dolomite Mts., 95. We … engaged a long-bodied waggonet to Reutte, in Tyrol.
1873. Black, Princess Thule, i. There was a large waggonette, of varnished oak, and a pair of small, powerful horses waiting for him there.
1875. S. Sidney, Bk. Horse, ii. 23. The wagonette … did not come into general use until some years after the International Exhibition of 1851, although, according to the Report on the Carriage Department of the Exhibition of 1862, ‘the first wagonette was built in 1846.’
b. attrib. and Comb., as wagonette-driver; wagonette omnibus, a motor-omnibus with accommodation resembling that of a wagonette.
1877. ‘C. Bede,’ Figaro at Hastings, 50. The wagonette-drivers, with uplifted whip-hand, hailing me with ‘Now for Fairlight and the Lover’s Seat!’
1903. Motoring Ann., 244. A waggonette omnibus. A little waggonette ’bus,… capable of seating about a dozen persons, has been plying on the Putney to Piccadilly route for more than a year.
